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Is Nobel Intent a blog? If so, we'd be one of the better science blogs out …

Forgive me while I engage in a bit of navel-gazing, but the publishers of the Nature series of scientific journals have set off a bit of an identity crisis here at Nobel Intent. Nature has an extensive web presence, and they have done some analysis of the quality of online material in the past. So I was intrigued when I found out that they had put together a list of the 50 most popular science blogs, as measured by Technorati's ranking system. I was a bit disappointed to find that we here at Nobel Intent hadn't cracked the top 50, until fellow writer Anders Bylund was kind enough to point out that our Technorati score should slide us in at 8th on the list. Which I'm largely happy about, although it raises an obvious question.

Why weren't we on that list? Well, Nature was kind enough to include the criteria they used to identify and evaluate science blogs. Since we're in good shape from the evaluation perspective (see above), it seems like we may have a problem in the identity department. Blogs were identified in part based on links from other scientific sites (where I've rarely seen Nobel Intent mentioned) and in part by asking the staff at Nature. In the past, I've exchanged emails with a Nature editor regarding an article here, so there's a reasonable chance they're aware of us. Which may mean our absence from the list distills down to one question: are we a blog?

Nature itself recognizes part of the problem with defining what is a blog in its selection criteria: "We narrowly define science blogs as ones that, as far as can be established, are written by working scientists and are about science (not their cat)." It's this sort of focus on the topic at hand, as opposed to whatever random thoughts struck our fancy on a given day, that led Ars Technica to designate Nobel Intent and its siblings Journals instead of blogs. At the same time, however, you're definitely seeing science as filtered through our personal interests, with a dose of our opinion, and with an occasional personal anecdote; this puts us squarely in blog territory. Calling it a journal in the science field, however, has its own issues, as that is a term generally reserved for publications such as, for example, Nature, which publish original research. In the end, we could rename this a blog or something else entirely tomorrow, and it wouldn't change our approach to material. Nobel Intent would continue to provide more detail and explanation than you'd get at most places, and we'll most certainly not start writing about our cats (unless we get ahold of one of those hypoallergenic ones for testing).

So, if it doesn't matter what we are, why am I going on about whether Nature considers us a blog? In short, because they're about as high profile as you get in the science world, and being featured by them would, in turn, raise our profile. Ars Technica graciously allows us to largely write whatever we like on topics we enjoy, but that's contingent on us maintaining and hopefully expanding our audience. Recognition by a major scientific publishing group could have been a big help, and not making that list is a missed opportunity.

Unlike most of our write ups, where there's an obvious topic of discussion, I'll take the liberty of suggesting a few here. Do you readers view us as a blog? What science blogs do you frequent? Any suggestions on expanding our audience?